Lord Adonis: My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Ruth Kelly) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
	Subject to parliamentary approval of any necessary supplementary estimate, the Department for Education and Skills departmental expenditure limit (DEL), (including the Office for Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools (OFSTED) which has a separate estimate) will be decreased by £661,000 from £30,766,423,000 to £30,765,762,000 and the administration costs limits will be increased by £1,059,000 from £275,359,000 to £276,418,000.
	Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are as set out in the following table.
	
		
			 DfES Resources Capital 
			  Change New DEL Of which:  Change New DEL Of which:  
			Voted Non-voted   Voted Non-voted 
			  £'000 £'000 £'000 £'000 £'000 £'000 £'000 £'000 
			 RfR 1 -13,204 24,989,407 8,316,452 16,672,955 0 4,180,348 2,869,687 1,310,661 
			 RfR 2 12,542 915,973 915,973 0 0 264,167 264,167 0 
			 RfR 3 1 195,253 195,253 0 0 14 14 0 
			 OFSTED 0 220,000 220,000 0 0 600 600 0 
			 Sub Total -661 26,320,633 9,647,678 16,672,955 0 4,445,129 3,134,468 1,310,661 
			 Depreciation* 0 -47,843 -12,247 -35,596 0 0 0 0 
			 Total -661 26,272,790 9,635,431 16,637,359 0 4,445,129 3,134,468 1,310,661 
		
	
	*Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL, in the table above, since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting.
	Within the Administration Cost limits changes, the impact is set out in the following table.
	
		
			 DfES Original Change Revised 
			  £'000 £'000 £'000 
			 DfES (RfR1) 250,689 1,059 251,748 
			 OFSTED 24,670 0 24,670 
			 Total 275,359 1,059 276,418 
		
	
	Resource DEL
	The decrease in the resource element of the DEL of £661,000 arises from a £145,038,000 decrease in the voted element of the resource DEL and an increase of £144,377,000 in the non-voted element of the resource DEL mainly to the department's non-departmental public bodies.
	Voted Resource DEL
	The £145,038,000 decrease in the voted element of the resource DEL arises from:
	RfR 1
	A £171,495,000 movement to non-voted, for the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority £500,000, the Investors in People UK £300,000, the Children's Commissioner £3,000,000, for the Training and Development Agency for Schools £4,000,000, and for Lifelong Learning programmes transferring to the Learning and Skills Council £163,695,000. A movement from non-voted of £1,034,000 for the General Teaching Council and £300,000 for a technical adjustment to quality review. A reduction of £35,000,000 of receipts for the Scientific Research Investment Fund. The take up of Invest to Save Budget of £1,480,000 for the Kid's Club. A movement to RfR2 voted for the Early Support programme £5,000,000 and for Local Authority Children's Centres £19,000,000. A movement from RfR2 voted £2,000,000 for Schools Foundation Stage and £300,000 for Training and Qualifications. A movement to RfR3 voted £1,000 for a token increase due to the reclassification of funding streams for the Children's Fund. A transfer to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport of £1,650,000 for Strategic Commissioning and the Creativity Review. A transfer to the Department for International Development of £19,000 for UK presidency gift donations. A transfer to the Department of Trade and Industry of £451,000 for the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship and review bodies membership fees. A transfer to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs of £863,000 for the Savings Gateway Pilots Project. A net transfer to the Home Office of £3,205,000 for Young People's Substance Misuse, Offenders Education, Education in Contracted Prisons and Youth Volunteering Challenge. A transfer from the Department of Health of £2,989,000 for Academic General Practitioners, Protection of Vulnerable Adults and the Bichard Vetting and Barring Scheme. A transfer from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister of £1,000,000 for Universities of Cornwall.
	RfR2
	A movement to RfR1 non-voted of £9,216,000 for the National College of School Leadership £7,000,000; the Training and Development Agency for Schools £2,000,000 and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority £216,000. The take up of Invest to Save Budget of £58,000 to support families. A movement from RfR1 voted for the Early Support programme £5,000,000 and for Local Authority Children's Centres £19,000,000. A movement to RfR1 voted of £2,000,000 for Schools Foundation Stage and £300,000 for Training and Qualifications.
	RfR3
	A movement from RfR1 of £1,000 for a token increase due to the re-classification of funding streams for the Children's Fund.
	Administration Cost Limits
	The £1,059,000 increase in the Administration Cost Limit arises from the transfer from the Department of Health for administrating the Protection of Vulnerable Adults scheme.
	Non-voted Resource DEL
	The £144,377,000 increase in Non-voted resource DEL arises from the movement of £171,495,000 from RfR1 voted resource DEL; a reduction of £35,000,000 expenditure for the Scientific Research Investment Fund. A movement to RfR1 voted resource of £1,034,000 for the General Teaching Council and £300,000 for a technical adjustment to quality review. A movement from RfR2 voted resource of £9,216,000.
	Capital DEL
	There is no change in the capital element of the DEL.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (James Plaskitt) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
	Subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary supplementary estimate, the Department for Work and Pensions DEL will be increased by £203,583,000 from £8,623,821,000 to £8,827,404,000 and the administration costs limits will be increased by £39,855,000 from £6,019,407,000 to £6,059,262,000. Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are as set out in the following table.
	
		
			  £k New DEL £k 
			  Change Voted Non-voted Total 
			 Resource 143,425 6,815,271 1,715,181 8,530,452 
			 Capital 60,158 396,414 9,928 406,342 
			 Depreciation1  -108,628 -762 -109,390 
			 Total 203,583 7,103,057 1,724,347 8,827,404 
		
	
	Note:
	1 Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting.
	The change in the resource element of the DEL arises from:
	RfR2
	an increase in provision of £80,000,000 (other current) due to increased spending on employment programmes (take up of end of year flexibility);
	an increase in provision of £600,000 (grants) due to a transfer from the Scottish Executive for the costs of administration subsidy to local authorities;
	an increase in provision of £2,939,000 (grants) due to a successful bid from the Invest to Save budget;
	RfR3
	an increase in provision of £5,000,000 (administration) for the costs of age-related payments as announced in the 2004 Pre-Budget Report;
	an increase in provision of £31,000 (grants) due to a successful bid from the Invest to Save budget;
	RfR4
	a reduction in provision of £145,000 (administration) due to a transfer to the Ministry of Defence for the Veterans Agency postal budget;
	RfR5
	an increase in provision of £20,000,000 (other current non-cash) due to an increase in the provision for early release (end of year flexibility);
	an increase in provision of £25,000,000 (administration) from the reserve to meet the cost of higher Post Office Card Account volumes as agreed in the SR2002 settlement;
	an increase in provision of £10,000,000 (administration) for measures to promote financial inclusion as agreed in the 2005 Budget Report;
	Capital
	The change in the capital element of the DEL arises from:
	RfR2
	an increase in provision of £60,000,000 due to spending on Jobcentre Plus rollout (take up of end year flexibility);
	RfR3
	an increase in provision of £158,000 due to a successful bid from the Invest to Save budget;
	Administration Costs
	The movement in the administration cost limit arises from those items noted above as affecting administration costs.
	Movements from Non-voted expenditure
	Additionally there are the following draw-downs that are neutral in overall DEL terms:
	Departmental Unallocated Provision
	£1,500,000 (resource) into RfR2 for the Working Age Client Group;
	£25,000,000 (resource) into RfR3 for the Pensions Service;
	£26,675,000 (resource) into RfR5 for Corporate Administration; and
	£7,000,000 (capital) into RfR5 for Corporate Projects;
	Welfare Modernisation Fund
	£25,000,000 into RfR1 for Child Support Reform;
	£30,000,000 into RfR2 for the Customer Management System;
	£69,000,000 (resource) and £29,000,000 (capital) into RfR3 for the Pensions Transformation Project; and
	£47,000,000 into RfR5 for expenditure on the Payment Modernisation Project, the Resource Management Project and the Debt Management Project;
	Employment Development Fund
	£70,000,000 into RfR2 for Jobcentre Plus roll out.
	Financial Assistance Scheme
	£21,000,000 from RfR3 into non-voted

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Fiona Mactaggart) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
	I welcome the publication today of the Prison and Probation Ombudsman's (PPO) report into the death at Styal of Julie Walsh in 2003 and wish to make a Statement about developments since 2003 and further planned work relating to women offenders. Much work has been done or is underway in respect of women offenders but it is timely to take stock and assess whether the right steps are being taken.
	On 21 August 2003 Paul Goggins announced that he had commissioned the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman to investigate the circumstances and events surrounding the death at Styal of Julie Walsh on 12 August 2003 and to examine the death in the context of the series of six deaths at Styal since August 2002. On 21 January 2004 Paul Goggins made a Statement in which he outlined the main general findings of the Ombudsman's report and the action the Prison Service was taking as a matter of urgency to prevent a recurrence. The Ombudsman's detailed and thorough report identified some serious inadequacies at Styal relating to regimes, facilities and procedures during the period covered by the six deaths. The Ombudsman suggested what lessons can be learnt from these sad events to prevent a recurrence; reported on factors common to the deaths; and made a number of recommendations, which Paul Goggins accepted. The report will be published today, 17 November 2005, on the Ombudsman's website.
	The first five deaths were thoroughly investigated by the Prison Service and were examined further by the PPO as part of his investigation into the death of Julie Walsh. Full public inquests took place between October 2003 and April 2005, the sixth inquest concluding on 26 April 2005. These were thorough and transparent investigations. There has been subsequent correspondence with the Cheshire Coroner about a number of concerns he identified in respect of three of the inquests.
	Many important changes have been made at Styal in the intervening period including the opening of a first night centre to which women arriving from court are transferred within 30 minutes of arrival, the introduction of a methadone detoxification programme, the opening of a specialist unit known as "CALM" to provide a therapeutic environment for those women not able to access wider regime activities, transformation of the segregation unit into a Care, Separation and Reintegration Unit, staffed by selected prison officers and mental health nurses to support prisoners in crisis, and development of the Reeman Unit into a day care facility run by mental health nurses to support prisoners with long term mental health issues. Following a review, new suicide and self-harm prevention procedures are in place overseen by a dedicated suicide prevention co-ordinator. ACCT (Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork), which provides individualised support and care for women at risk of self-harm, has been introduced and staff at Styal fully trained in its use.
	The Ombudsman's report raised some very serious issues and has made a valuable contribution to suicide prevention not just at Styal but also throughout the rest of the women's estate. From 1 April 2004 the Ombudsman has conducted investigations into all deaths in prison custody (and probation hostels and immigration centres). He has provided greater independent scrutiny and transparency and increased public confidence, and made it more likely that lessons are learnt that reduce the likelihood of further deaths. The report has helped inform development of a suicide and self-harm prevention strategy specifically for women. Moreover, the increased knowledge and learning is being shared across other custodial institutions to help inform suicide prevention strategies across the board.
	The Government believe that prison should be reserved for dangerous, serious and seriously persistent offenders and sentences should be as long as necessary for punishment and public protection, but no longer. Sentencing is a matter for the courts but sentencers should be adequately informed about the vulnerability of individual offenders and should balance the seriousness of the offence and the risk of harm offenders pose to others with the risk of harm to themselves. Section 166 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 gives sentencers the discretion to mitigate sentences by taking into account such information and allows sentencers to impose a community sentence, provided there are relevant mitigating factors, even where the offence would normally have justified a custodial sentence. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 also states that a court must not pass a custodial sentence on an offender unless it is of the opinion that the offence, or combination of offences, are serious enough to warrant such a sentence.
	Sentencers must be well informed about the range of non-custodial sentences at their disposal. To ensure effective dialogue between sentencers and those who deliver sentences, liaison takes place between local probation services and sentencers. Consultative fora involving sentencers, court staff and offender managers are being used to provide feedback to sentencers on the effectiveness of sentences; to enhance understanding of sentencing options available locally; and to provide feedback on sentencing decisions including information when someone they have sentenced to custody self harms, or commits or attempts suicide. Many sentencers welcome this feedback.
	Work continues on the Women's Offending Reduction Programme (WORP) to co-ordinate and implement a comprehensive programme of work to address the complex range of factors that affect women's offending—including substance misuse, mental health problems, housing, child care issues, histories of abuse, poverty and education, training and employment. WORP seeks to identify ways in which the various departments, agencies and organisations that deal with these issues can work more effectively together to tackle the problem as a whole, rather than dealing with each in isolation. £9.15 million is to be spent on new approaches in two areas to demonstrate how women's offending can be tackled effectively in the community, including provision of one-stop centres for women serving sentences in the community and for those at risk of offending. We have also introduced a full range of tough, credible and effective sentences as alternatives to custody within a new sentencing framework in the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
	Work is in hand to improve the prison life experience of those women who need to be in prison, particularly relating to their health, mental health and substance abuse needs. We are also developing suicide prevention and self-harm strategies specifically for women; providing much better healthcare services in prison in partnership with the NHS; and improving clinical substance misuse services by providing effective detoxification services and drug treatment programmes for women prisoners.
	We believe that all of these measures are helping to make a difference to the vulnerable women who come into contact with the criminal justice system. Nonetheless, the Government are not complacent and consider that it would be timely to take stock of the work being done. We therefore plan to look again at the measures in place to ensure that we are doing everything possible for these women, including looking at the pathways through the criminal justice system of "vulnerable" women with a multitude of risk factors. I will make a further announcement about this when the scope of the review has been determined.

Lord Drayson: My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence (John Reid) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
	Subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary supplementary estimate, the Ministry of Defence departmental expenditure limits (DEL) will be increased by £109,105,000 from £30,944,726,000 to £31,053,831,000. Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are as set out in the following table.£000s
	
		
			   New DEL 
			  Change Voted Non-voted Total 
			 Resource 450,824 31,674,758 1,281,792 32,956,550 
			 Capital (341,719) 6,537,537 744 6,538,281 
			 Depreciation*  -7,556,000 -885,000 -8,441,000 
			 Total 109,105 30,656,295 397,536 31,053,831 
		
	
	*Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting.
	The change in the resource element of the DEL arises from:
	a transfer from capital DEL to resource DEL of £370,000,000;
	transfers totalling £8,553,000 from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (£4,745,000) and the Department for Transport (£3,808,000) as their share of the National Meteorological Programme and Weather Warning Service costs under a pan-government agreement;
	a transfer of £145,000 from the Department of Work and Pensions as a contribution to the Veteran Agency's postage costs;
	a transfer of £500,000 from the Department for International Development in respect of the Sub-Sahara Global Conflict Prevention Pool;
	a transfer of £93,000 to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in respect of staff costs for the Leeds Armouries Museum Pattern Room;
	the take-up of end year flexibility of £28,281,000 capital DEL and £71,719,000 resource DEL; and
	an increase in capital appropriations in aid of £45,886,000 from QinetiQ resulting from the repayment of a loan to the MoD.
	The changes to capital and resource, together with changes in internal budgetary re-allocations, will lead to an increased net cash requirement of £459,105,000.